The Seed Ambassadors Project

Sarah’s Soapbox – Climate Crisis

Each year we publish a political essay in our paper catalog. This year the Sarah’s Soapbox was cut due to space constraints, so we’ve posted it here instead.

2019 was not an easy year to be a farmer in most of the country. Here was no exception.

Nearly every month in 2019 we had new examples of the effects of climate change in our local area, not to mention the world at large. At our farm in Sweet Home, Oregon, unusually heavy snowfall landed in late February, burying our fields in snow just as many overwintering crops were beginning to go to seed. The weight of the wet snow snapped some of these nascent seedheads right off (Brussels sprouts, mustards). Then the sun came out in the beginning of March long enough for fields to dry out and flowers to bloom. In April, severe river flooding led to a nearby contract seed grower’s field, that was full of seed crops, being submerged by six feet (!) of water. The following month we had to irrigate to finish prepping our spring beds because of lack of rain, unheard of in our usually wet springs. After a summer that never really heated up, nonstop rains fell most of September and we lost a few dry seeded crops because of it (dry beans, lettuce). Our first frost appeared in mid-September this year, and then in October, several weeks of deep freezes (22˚F) put an undeniable end to the growing season – the kind that row cover doesn’t help – and took a few more crops along with it (sorghum, some flowers). Here, in an area where we frequently don’t even get a mild frost until November.

It’s now mid-November as I write, and we haven’t had a drop of rain for threeweeks. November, historically our wettest month of the year. I canonly wonder what December, and beyond that 2020, will have in store.

In some ways it’s like our season has shifted forward a full month. In our tiny corner of the universe, we’re living climate change almost every day. In these waning days of 2019, it seems the only thing that is predictable any more is day length.

In comparison to many other places in the world, we don’t have it bad at all. It’s still perfectly livable here. No catastrophe has wiped out our home, as with the floods and fires that many other places have experienced. And thanks to the diversity within our fields, in spite of our few crop losses we still had a successful growing season. I have acknowledged climate change in our seed catalog pages before, but it seems every year the effects are being felt more strongly.

It also seems like 2019 was a turning point for the general public in regards to the climate crisis, thanks to the many powerful youth leaders such as Greta Thunberg with Fridays for Future, Felíquan Charlemagne with US Climate Strike, and the youth-led Sunrise Movement. On September 20, 2019 the Global Climate Strike saw 4,000,000 participants in 150 countries leave their schools and places of work, united in a call for action to curb greenhouse gas emissions to an extent that would mitigate the climate crisis. But the people in power are still not responding.

The UN Climate Action Summit in September that prompted the week of action will probably achieve as much as every preceding congress has on the topic – lots of words and very little action. More appalling was our own government’s silence at the talks. The US has since begun the official process of pulling out of the Paris Agreement, which will ultimately make us the only country not included in the landmark international agreement aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Recently, the media has pointed out that the USDA has been mostly silent when it comes to climate change – to the point of suppressing studies that show the dangers of climate change. This at a time when farmers are facing ever more extreme weather and suffering far greater damages than Adaptive Seeds crop losses this year. For example the 40,000,000 acres that went unplanted due to flooding in the US Midwest this spring.

How bad does ithave to get? If our leaders won’t act, what can we do?

Here in Oregon, after many years of trying, a Cap and Invest Bill known as HB 2020 came before the solidly Democratic state legislature this summer, with the intent to reduce Oregon’s emissions to 45% below 1990 levels by 2025, and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The money from carbon credits would go towards retraining people formerly employed by carbon producing industries, among other things. The bill passed the House.

But then shenanigans ensued with 11 Republican state Senators leaving the state to deny the quorum necessary for a vote. After five days, the Senate President announced that the bill didn’t actually have enough support to pass anyway, and the Republican Senators eventually returned to vote on dozens of other bills that were held hostage by this denial of democracy.

Really. The lengthspeople in power will go to to protect the status quo, and the moneyedinterests involved, is astounding. This is what democracy looks like.It’s sickening.

The opposition to HB 2020 depicted the bill as a “job-killing energy sales tax that would deliver little benefit for the planet.” Some of the biggest polluters are those in resource extraction industries, and even though the logging industry was exempted from the bill, transportation was not. Lots of rural Oregonians drive trucks (including log trucks) as independent contractors. #Timberunity was born to oppose the bill, and quickly mobilized an angry mob of people fighting to keep the status quo of resource extraction and pollution. Many farmers in our area jumped right on board, with #timberunity signs dotting our neighbors’ fields. Large scale farming, after all, uses lots of fossil fuels, and there was speculation that the cost of gas would go up $0.30 per gallon.

Now TimberUnity is a PAC, with the first donation coming from the CEO of Stimson Lumber Company. The stated goal of this PAC is to save Oregon and its natural resource economy. “We can no longer support Lawmakers who support special-interests over the working men and women of Oregon”.

But the website also says “Every one of us who is connected to working the land has a voice in #TimberUnity.” Well, that includes me. I am a rural Oregonian, farming in the midst of climate chaos, and I’m saddened that so many people who are also “connected to working the land” see combating climate change as a greater threat than climate change itself. And I’m ashamed and enraged that many of Oregon’s elected officials are not doing everything they can to mitigate the crisis.

People were worried this law would threaten their way of life. But the climate crisis is more of a threat, and it threatens more people. And continued resource extraction is only going to make it worse. #timberdisunity. Remember the epic fire seasons the west coast of the US faced 2017 and 2018? Where will the timber jobs be when the forests have burned down, in part because of changing rain patterns due to climate change?

The author harvesting dry beans in 2018, wearing a mask due to poor air quality caused by wildfire smoke.

How bad does ithave to get? If our leaders won’t act, what can we do?

Instead of #timberunity, Fridays for the Future has another idea: Worldwide Unity, a call for action to fight climate change, and they’ve released a moving video. Anyone remember “We Are the World” from 1985? It’s like that, but it’s youth from all over the world, singing about how “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

While inspiring, it’s really too bad that this is the case. It’s us adults who have the money, and the right to vote, and the ability to choose whether to drive SUVs or hybrids, or to not drive at all. Many of us who are now well into adulthood have been doing small things for years, reducing our food miles by growing our own food, conserving energy, minimizing our participation in the consumer economy, reusing, etc. But it’s clearly not enough. Voting to elect more leaders who are on the same page may not even be enough — Even a Democratic supermajority in Oregon doesn’t include enough of them to get climate legislation passed.

****

During the SeptemberGlobal Climate Strikes, some of our team here at Adaptive Seedsparticipated in local actions. I stayed at the farm, harvesting andcleaning seeds. It was heartening to know that so many people werestepping out for the climate. I wished I could join them – because ally is both a noun and a verb, and requiresaction – lip service is not enough. I rationalized my absence fromthe strike by telling myself I was doing relevant work, and thatdriving 60 miles round trip by myself to the nearest strike wouldnot help the planet. Mostly I was trying to process some seeds beforethe rain sprouted them all in the field.

Back in April, wehad written off those crops I previously mentioned that weresubmerged in 6’ of water: kale, cabbage, onions, pac choi, andmore. Especially the onions, whose bulbs had only been planted backout a few weeks before the flood and probably didn’t havewell-established roots, we thought were sure to float away with acurrent that moved several large trees into the field and knockeddown the deer fence. I sowed a few new flats of those onions, andstarted looking for new contract growers for some of the othervarieties.

But once the water subsided nearly a week later, we received the report that to everyone’s amazement, the plants were all still there and appeared to be just fine. With them, tiny deposits of silt appeared on the downstream side of each plant. Each of those crops went on to produce healthy seed crops, and a demonstration of true resilience in the face of adversity, or what could have been one hell of a “selection event.” Perhaps their having been previously grown in the water-logged soil of our home farm gave them an advantage. Perhaps growing under organic conditions, without plastic may have helped set them up for success. Or maybe not. Maybe many plants are just as adaptable as humans (within reason). And with each generation comes more adaptation. That’s the hope, anyway. We’re all in this together.

The next generationof humans will have to adapt to the increasing demands of climatechange. It’s a disgrace that we aren’t setting them up forsuccesswith the policies (or lackthereof) that we are instituting today. But in our fields and in ourgardens, maybe we are.

And it turns out here in Oregon, we’re getting another chance at HB 2020, which is slated to get a second chance in the legislature during the upcoming short session in February of 2020. Oregon farmers can help the bill to pass this time around, by signing on to this endorsement letter.

Oregon Canola Saga 2.0 (2019 ed.)

Let’s start at the beginning…

Back in 2012 the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) threatened to abolish the longstanding canola exclusionary zone in the Willamette Valley. We fought back, with your help, to get legislation passed by the state which funded additional research and included a sunset clause on the canola restrictions in the valley. Here’s a good summary of why canola is problematic for specialty seed production and where we stood in the winter of 2013 from Oregon’s Agricultural Progress by Gail Wells, Canola In The Valley.

HB2427

Oregon HB2427 was passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2013 and the resulting research conducted by Oregon State University (OSU) was presented in 2017. It’s a whooping 105 pages and you can read the whole thing if you like here (the Executive Summary and Recommendations are pages 6-11 of the PDF). In the interest of getting to the point, here are the highlights.

Is canola uniquely problematic? OSU says No.

OSU researchers determined that under current cultural practices in the Willamette Valley there were no unique disease, pests, weed, or cross pollination problems associated with canola. Meaning that turnip and radish have just as many problems as canola and since we don’t currently regulate those crops, why would we limit or regulate canola specifically.

OSU Canola Genetics, Isolation, and Pinning Recommendations

Aside: It’s time to mention that the specialty seed industry in the Willamette Valley operates under a voluntary self-regulating system through membership with the Willamette Valley Specialty Seed Association (WVSSA) which grants access and priority pinning to a private map held and operated by WVSSA. This is how we cooperatively prevent cross pollination among growers in the Willamette Valley. However, the Willamette Valley Oilseed Producers Association says they want nothing to do with that.

OSU Policy Recommendations

A few options are presented in the report varying around the details of acreage, voluntary regulation vs. legislative regulation, etc. But the important takeaways are that the researchers believe coexistence is possible AND that some sort of pinning procedure and maintaining isolation distances is critical. Directly from the report:

“None of the specific options is recommended over another, only that a pinning system is put in place that is transparent and provides equal access and treatment for all growers.”

Our 2¢

We don’t dispute OSU’s findings. However, just because canola isn’t worse than turnip or radish doesn’t mean we should lift the restrictions on it. Since permitting canola in the Willamette Valley would result in an increase of annual Brassicacea production acreage, you don’t have to be a pathologist to know that there will naturally be an increase in pest, disease, and weed pressure. And the vast majority of that increased pressure will be handled with chemical agricultural practices in the form of pesticides and herbicides. As small-scale, regional, organic specialty seed farmers we are on the fringe, already marginalized within the industry here in the Willamette Valley. As advocates for food justice, security, and biodiversity it’s easy for us to say that organic seed production for food crops takes obvious priority over oilseed. We don’t believe we need more oil, we need more organic seed produced for food.

The real question for us in all this is, and has always been, is this what we want for our future? Is this how we restore regional biodiversity and create food security? Is this encouraging agricultural practices that prevent climate change rather than subsidizing practices that increase it? Is this Bringing Biodiversity Back?

[And we haven’t even mentioned the elephant in the field: genetically engineered and herbicide tolerant canola.]

HB3382

Oregon HB3382 was passed by the Legislature in 2015 as a follow-up to HB2427. It required a literature review / case study of canola production in addition to the Willamette Valley research study funded in HB2427. It also required ODA to develop recommendations for coexistence of canola with other agricultural production in the Willamette Valley, and specified that those recommendations needed to provide adequate protections “to maintain the unique attributes of the specialty seed industry in this state.” ODA was to base its recommendations on the OSU findings/recommendations. ODA’s report to the Legislature was presented a year after OSU’s in autumn 2018. At only 9 pages it is considerably shorter and you can find it here. Again, some highlights…

A lot is simply quoting OSU’s report, summary of the industries at play, etc., etc. The key takeaway, and therefore big problem, is that ODA does not have the authority to require or maintain pinning guidelines or isolation distance between canola growers and specialty seed growers. As mentioned above, a transparent pinning and isolation process was the primary recommendation from OSU for (relative) peaceful, productive, nondestructive coexistence between producers. If ODA does not have this authority, how do we achieve this?

ODA’s mandate is to protect Oregon’s agriculture against pest and diseases, and NOT interfere in market viability. The Legislature did not change this and therefore left ODA with no authority in regards to requiring or mandating isolation distances or pinning. Their only move was to convene an advisory committee to discuss a new rule that provides coexistence. This committee met a handful of times this winter (2018-2019) and the resulting proposed rule change from ODA is now public. Needless to say (or why are we writing this?) it sucks. Especially for us and anyone who strives for organic specialty seed production.

ODA’s 2019 Proposed Rule

ODA released their proposed rule on Brassicacea production in the Willamette Valley at the end of April 2019, and announced a public hearing for May 29th. The public comment period on the proposed rule closes on June 21st. Keep in mind that the current canola restrictions come to an end on July 1st, giving the ODA only 5 business days to make any changes. It feels obvious to us that they’re asking for interjection by the Legislature.

The proposed rule creates a new Proposed Isolation Area (the pink shaded area in the map below) that supposedly will remain canola free. Although, interestingly the actual rule does not state this with clarity or certainty. This is what ODA has verbally stated they’ll do.

The proposed rule states that canola will now be permitted in all other areas of the Willamette Valley Protected District (green border in map below) as long as the grower applies for and receives a permit through ODA. All land outside of the Protected District is a general production area with no restrictions, permits, etc.

ODA’s 2019 Proposed Isolation Area is the shaded pink area. The green border represents ODA’s existing Willamette Valley Protected District. As you can see, Adaptive Seeds is WAY out of the zone with no protection. Link to full map.

The proposed rule also includes increased measures for preventing contamination through weed, disease, pest, crop rotation, transportation, etc., management for all Brassicacea grown in the Protected District.

And, that’s it. No details or guidelines as to what the permit process entails for canola growers. No mention of isolation requirements or pinning process. No clearly stated way of protecting growers from cross-pollination. No collaboration with WVSSA and the existing pinning or isolation guidelines. No clear prohibition on canola in the Proposed Isolation Area.

First, as you can see in the map Adaptive Seeds is so far from the Proposed Isolation Area that we feel rather threatened by all this. Apparently we, and many of our contract growers, are considered too small to be worthy of protection by ODA. Second, there is zero information in ODA’s proposed rule regarding the permit process which directly effects our operation. Third, we obviously had to attend the public hearing on May 29th since we had a whole lot of questions, complaints, and serious concerns.

Permit Bullshmit

On May 29th we headed to Salem and put democracy into action. There were SO many questions raised during the course of this hearing. The hearing opened with a Q&A and the answers and exchanges here just gave us more cause for concern. According to the representatives in attendance from ODA the permit process appears to be purely bureaucratic. There are no qualifiers or restrictions. If you apply for the permit and are located in the Protected District and not in the Isolation Area, then your permit will be approved. No.Questions.Asked. No consideration or confirmation for whether there’s an established specialty seed grower next door, or even an already approved canola permit next door. Let alone in the recommended 3 mile isolation required for varietal integrity. ODA was very clear that all permits would be approved as there are no guidelines for denial.

So, how are we supposed to know whether any of our neighbors in a 3 mile radius are planning on growing canola and contaminating our B. napus or B. rapa growouts this year? ODA’s answer to that question, was to call them and ask. Yep, you read that right.

Read Sarah’s full testimony here.

2019 Legislative Action

Since the ODA’s process has floundered and the only industry satisfied is the oilseed producers, a bill is currently in process with the Oregon Legislature. SB885 was introduced in February as a sort of Plan B and indeed we’re glad it’s there because we certainly need it. The bill keeps the current restrictions on canola within the Willamette Valley Protected District. These restrictions require canola growers to get a license from ODA, a cap of 500 acres, and require industry recommended isolation distances with specialty seed growers to be maintained. It’s basically just a renewal of the existing stalemate, set to expire in four more years in June of 2023 and we’ll likely just do this all over again [insert face palm emoji]. If passed, our understanding is that SB885 would override ODA’s proposed rule. There is a retroactive date in the bill set for July 1 so any canola planted will have to abide to the stipulations in this bill.

As of today, June 17th, SB885 was passed out of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means just this last Friday, June 14th. It will be on the Senate floor any day now and we are not certain it will pass.

Call to Action! What you can do to help!

Do you live in Oregon? Contact your Oregon representatives NOW!

Urge them to support and pass SB885. Tell them that this bill is necessary because ODA’s proposed rule does not protect specialty seed growers. Therefore current restrictions in the Willamette Valley Protected District should remain to protect Oregon’s specialty seed growers, and all of the farmers, gardeners and eaters who depend on the seed produced here for food security worldwide.

Again, the bill will be on the Senate floor any day now.

Do you care about seed? Submit a comment to ODA by June 21 at 5pm!

Via email: ssummers@oda.state.or.us

Or by mail: Sunny Summers, Oregon Department of Agriculture, 635 Capitol St. NE, Salem, OR 97301

Our suggested talking points for ODA:

Thank You!

Additional resources, talking points, etc.:

What is up with so-called Public Plant Breeding? – 2018 Rye Ramble

The 2018 Rye Ramble – What is up with so-called Public Plant Breeding?

Why are public plant breeders releasing most of their breeding work privately, as patented or protected? Should we still call it public plant breeding?

In previous Rye Rambles, I have called out the bad behavior of corporate seed companies patenting seed and breeding hybrids with new techniques that make it nearly impossible to save seeds. This year I have been thinking about my friends in the public plant breeding sector, university plant breeders that have a long history of doing good work and fighting the good fight for the public. In recent years their situation has changed and become less public plant breeding and more privatized.

I get super excited when they release a new variety into the public domain. However, the reason I get excited is because it is now a rare event and these public plant breeders must fight and sacrifice for this privilege. University administrators have increasingly required the use of utility patents and Plant Variety Protection (PVP) for new releases, and/or they impose royalties and Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs). All of these tactics restrict their use. Here are a few related questions stuck in my craw.

• Why are the so-called “public” plant breeders releasing most of their breeding work privately, as patented or protected?

• Why are so-called “private” independent plant breeders releasing their varieties to the public domain?

• Should university plant breeders be called public breeders if and only if they release all their varieties to the public domain?

• Should we be called public plant breeders and they be called the private plant breeders? Continue reading

Beating Black Leg on Brassicas

No FOMO* for Phoma

There are plenty of things about Oregon’s Willamette Valley that are worthy of FOMO, or the *Fear of Missing Out. We have mild winters, fertile soils, & natural beauty abounds. Phoma lingam, however, is not FOMO-worthy. Since 2014, the Willamette Valley has been hit with Phoma lingam, aka Black Leg, a fungal disease that affects all species of Brassica family plants including kale, cabbage, turnips, & many other important food crops, as well as many common weeds such as wild mustard. Black leg causes stunted growth, girdling of the stem, & can lead to great reductions in yield & sometimes plant death. It is estimated that around 10,000 acres of Willamette Valley brassicas were infected in 2014, & similar numbers may have been infected in 2015.

What is being done about it?

The disease is thought to have come in on infected seed, & so in response the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) has passed an administrative rule requiring all Brassica seed that will be planted in the Willamette Valley in quantities over 1/2 oz, to have been tested from a qualified, approved laboratory, and to be treated for the disease, even if the test results are negative.

At Adaptive Seeds, seed quality is a priority & we are committed to providing seeds that exceed our customers’ expectations. Even though most of our Brassica varieties are not sold in packages over 1/2 oz, we have decided to test  all of our Brassica seed lots, & all of the test results so far have been negative. At this point, we are not treating any of our seed prior to sale.

Continue reading

We Love Growing Dry Beans, You Might Too!

Growing dry beans can be a fun & beautiful addition to the garden. If you have space, it is easy to produce homestead quantities of dry beans to feed your family. On a small farm scale growing dry beans can provide a profitable addition to the farmer’s market display. Conveniently, seed saving is the same as crop harvest for dry beans, which makes them a crop you only have to buy seed for once (unless you accidentally eat them all).

We sometimes sell a mix of bean varieties as a “Bean Party.” So pretty!

Here at Adaptive Seeds, we love to grow beans almost as much as we like to eat them (which is a lot). Producing them is a bit of a process but it’s pretty fun & you’re rewarded with piles of delicious, nutritious jewels at the end so it’s totally worth it.

As market growers, we were attracted to dry bean production because we saw a need for local staple food production – for food security as much as to fill a market niche – & soon discovered we could sell all of the beans we could produce. We also really like having dry beans fill a spot in our field rotations. In the past we have planted as many as 6 acres in dry beans, but it didn’t take us long to figure out that if we planted less acreage but took better care of it, we could have much higher yields & fewer headaches. Since we’ve shifted our focus to seed production, we have reduced our dry bean crop size further & now grow about ½ acre of beans per year, still selling some as food. Following is an assortment of tips & tricks for dry bean production, & details of our bean enterprise budget from 2014.

Planting

In our area (The Willamette Valley of Oregon), dry beans can be planted until the beginning of June, which means you still have some time to get a crop in the ground this season. Our goal is to sow our dry beans by mid-May, but we have successfully harvested earlier varieties (such as Early Warwick) from sowing as late as June 10.

Continue reading

The Control of Seed and Seed Sovereignty

Rye Ramble (from the 2015 Adaptive Seeds Catalog)

The Control of Seed and Seed Sovereignty

At Adaptive Seeds, we talk about our work of Bringing Biodiversity Back. Part of that, of course, is growing and stewarding seed and providing you with good seed stock for your own seed saving efforts. But seed work isn’t only done in the field, and preserving seed sovereignty and freedom takes more than just saving seeds. Working to keep seeds free of control mechanisms, such as patenting, is another important aspect of promoting and preserving agricultural biodiversity, as is building awareness about what seed control mechanisms exist.

We often feel like outliers in the seed world because we wish to keep seed a free, sovereign community asset that is passed down between the generations and between friends. A growing number of people share this pro-sovereignty perspective and we are excited to be part of this community. The more I think about all the different forms of seed control schemes, the more I realize that it is very strange to try to empower seed freedom. It seems like the multinational seed industry is desperately trying to put our collective inheritance into proprietary bondage for the benefit of their shareholders as quickly as possible.

You might think, “Your seeds are not free, they cost money.” So what is meant by free? Like open source software we believe seeds should be, Free as in speech, not as in beer. In a metaphorical sense I see all seed as free and what we get paid for is not the seed per say but the service of stewardship and production of a precious gift. A seed is a living organism that has intrinsic value and a long history, of which we seed stewards have only contributed a small, very recent part. We can’t own that.

The concept of seed ownership is problematic in part because it is rooted in entitlement philosophy. As humans we all have a little bit of this philosophy always under the surface. It is a trait that helps us survive in competitive situations of scarcity, but I think it is inappropriate in situations of abundance. As an overt practice it is more common in institutions and businesses (especially in regards to Intellectual Property rights), than in our personal behavior.

Continue reading

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